Content area
Full Text
CHINESE PERCEPTIONS OF THE "JEWS" and Judaism: A History of the Youtai. By Zhou Xun. Richmond (UK.): Curzon Press (with Paul & Co., Chicago, IL). 2001. x, 202 pp. (Illus.) L40.00/US$75. 00, cloth. ISBN 0-7007-- 1249-6.
One particularly amazing phenomenon of the 1990s in China has been the surge of interest in Judaism and Israel. The establishment of full diplomatic relations (and not "re-establishment" as the author states in her epilogue) between China and Israel in 1992 highlighted the growth of economic, cultural and academic relations between the two countries. Chinese interest in the Jews and Judaism, however, reaches back to the time when the West began to assert imperial power in East Asia.
Zhou Xun is a graduate of Sichuan University, who received an M.A. in Judaic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her book is based on her doctoral thesis, which she completed at the London School of Oriental and African Studies. It is noteworthy that the word Jews" in the title is placed between quotation marks to suggest that in China, not less than in the West, perceptions of the Jews...